Hey guys,
Just wanted to confirm a successful upgrade of mine – battery and HDD replacement with extended one and Toshiba
MK1634GAL respectively. I thought it'd be useful because I found no successful upgrade stories with the drive I used, and it's not mentioned at
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/HardDriveReplacement either, so I had no idea whether it would end up working at all. The reason behind choosing this drive is that it is the highest capacity single layer HDD I could find. About the reasons why I didn't want to install an SSD please read at the end of the post.
Tools of the trade:
- Extended capacity battery from Cameron Sino (aka CS H110 XL, bought from some Russian Internet store, about $27)
- ZIF-to-IDE converter by libmartcom (it has been mentioned here on the forum numerously, bought on eBay, about $29) http://www.ebay.com/itm/281099104230
- Toshiba MK1634GAL drive (bought on AliExpress, about $60)
- Patched Korean firmware v. 1.31 with support for large drives http://cassland.org/rockbox/H300%20r17607M-080522%20131kr.zip
- Small screwdriver, guitar pick, a bit of courage
There's not much to add to what's already been said about upgrade, everything is really straightforward, the hardest part (for me) was assembling the jukebox after plugging the new battery in – keep tweezers or something alike nearby to put screws holding motherboard back into their holes, it's not that easy... Or just have a screwdriver with magnetized edge – it's up to you.
First I installed the battery, then flashed the boot loader, then installed drive with converter attached, then partitioned it (with Paragon Partition Manager 2014 Free Edition), then installed Rockbox – I didn't have any problems at all stages of the process.
I promised to write about reasons of not choosing SSD for upgrade, so here you go:
- It's still rather expensive (512GB drive costs about $230-250 here in Russia)
- I wouldn't be able to use original firmware
- I would need converter from mSATA to ZIF in addition to the one I have used
- It would not speed up file transfer between PC and jukebox
- I actually have no need for that much space for music
Please ask questions if you have them. Sorry about my not-so-perfect English. Cheers!